Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling and the legal licensees of Harry Potter books and products. I am writing this for my own pleasure and have no intent to make any sort of profit with it. The inspiration came from Severitus, the plot came from my warped imagination, and everything else belongs to JKR and those to whom she's given the rights.
WHAT WILL COME, WILL COME. . .
(An Answer to Severitus' Challenge)
By RowanRhys
Chapter Five
July 2, 1995, midmorning
(Hogwarts)
The liquid that hadn't spilled from the damaged cauldron was finally sealed into more than a dozen glass vials, each marked with warnings and labeled "Do Not Touch!" in blood red letters. On the table farthest away from the initial attempt, he had another batch of Wolfsbane potion going, waiting for it to boil down to the correct consistency to add the reddish powder. The floor was spotless and the damaged cauldron cleaned and shrunk for disposal. He'd buried himself in work, ignoring Pomfrey's commands to eat and rest, trying his hardest not to think of the incredible revelation he'd had. Nor about the look on Dumbledore's face as he'd blurted out the words about Harry Potter's parentage.
The old man had actually flinched before slipping back behind his genial mask as Severus expressed his horrified astonishment. After cleaning the broken glass from the Potion Master's hand and pouring a vial of Healing Potion over the cuts, the Headmaster had made his excuses and left him alone in the room with his frantic thoughts and memories.
Has everything I've been since back then been false? Snape held his aching head in his hands. What happened to me? Why? And how did that botched potion break down whatever was keeping these memories from me?
One by one, memories drifted out of the back of his mind, some faint and blurred with age, others brilliant and shining like a new silver cauldron--and all of them about Lily and his love for her--triggered by the sight of a quill and parchment note on a table--Darling Sev, meet me at the end of the Charms corridor tonight. L.--or the scent of the carved cedar box that had held his wax and seal for years--"Happy Christmas, Severus. I hope you like it."
He began to cross the room to check on the simmering potion and suddenly gasped as a new vision burst into being behind his eyes, forcing him to sink onto a nearby stool to keep from falling.
"I wish you would let me tell them. I hate hearing them call you a Deatheater. If only they realized what you are really doing," Lily's soft fingers stroked his shoulders as she tried to help him get over the after effects of a Crucio cast on him that night. "Then they'd be accepting of us being together and we could quit hiding from them--stop lying to them."
"Dear heart, do you really trust Black to keep a secret like this? He'll lose his temper over something and the next thing you know, he'll blurt it out to the wrong person and I'm as good as dead. He turned in her embrace and wrapped his arms around her. "It's bad enough when I get punished for not being as 'effective' as Voldemort wants me to be. But I don't want his flunkies going after you as a means to keep me in line. They tortured McCaffrey's children last night. Two five-year-old girls swept from their beds to be an object lesson to their parent."
He shuddered, his dark eyes squeezed shut, hating himself for not being able to stop it, hearing their screams of terror and pain that lasted far too long before they were released, before they were dropped, broken and bleeding into their front yard under a Dark Mark.
Lily curled up around him, clinging to him as her tears wet his bare chest. "I wish I had known you, really known you before they got hold of you. I'd have fought them tooth and nail to keep you from having to suffer that mark on your arm."
"It only reflects the stain on my soul," he whispered unhappily into her hair.
She jerked back in his grasp and glared up at him. "You purged that stain the day you came back to Dumbledore! The day you turned against the Dark Lord!
"You're the reason I came back, Lily. Only your light got through the darkness to let me see my way back."
A low moan fought its way from Snape's throat as the painfully sharp impressions of the memory faded away into the back of his mind, but now retrievable. He choked off the sound, not wanting anyone to possibly hear his distress. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, pinching the bridge of his nose as his head began to throb once more.
"Three more hours of work on the potion and I can go take a hefty dose of Dreamless Sleep," he muttered as he got back to his unsteady feet and headed over to the cauldron and the waiting bowl of Wolfsbane powder. "And when I wake up I will personally go in search of that damned Poltergeist and help the Baron nail him to the Trophy Room ceiling!"
"Oh, I don't think that would be a good addition to the décor at all, Severus."
Snape whirled around to face the door and met the Headmaster's blue eyes. The kindness in them seemed tainted with something darker, like regret, and he turned his attention back to the measuring spoon and stirring rod. "The staff room then."
"Then Minerva would complain about it. Severus." The gentle voice was insistent on his attention and he turned back to find Dumbledore had produced a gracefully carved shallow stone bowl and laid it on the table next to him. "I know that you've refused to use a Pensieve in the past, but I think that you may want to reconsider."
"You know how I feel about having all of my private thoughts in a place where others can access them. It's too dangerous. A security risk."
"And I think that if you don't use it, your sanity will be at risk." Albus looked down at the Pensieve and sighed. "At least think about it."
"I need to get this potion finished, Headmaster." I don't want to think about this now--or ever! It hurts too much! His fingers were white-knuckled on the stirring rod.
"I'll let Remus know that he'll have his potion on time." Dumbledore paused at the doorway before he left the room. "Don't shut me out, Severus. At least not for long."
Snape positioned himself with his back towards the Pensieve and focused on dissolving the Wolfsbane powder and trying to keep his concentration such that he was able to hold the erupting memories at bay until the job was finally finished. Bottled and labeled with shaking hands, Lupin's potion was neatly arranged in the center of the desk by the time the bell that indicated lunch was being served chimed throughout the castle.
Unwilling to leave such a valuable item as the Pensieve sitting in the lab despite the locks and wards, he reluctantly picked it up and carried it through the secret entrance to his private apartment, where he set it on a corner table and covered it with an extra blanket from his bed. Not even bothering to kick off his shoes or to remove the green bathrobe he still wore over the pajamas in which Madame Pomfrey had dressed him, he fell across his mattress, pulled the green velvet curtains closed and sank into darkness. Darkness laced with dreams. . .
* * * * *
July 2, 1995, afternoon
(Little Whinging, Surrey)
He put up his arms to protect his face as Dudley swung the stick at him. The snap of breaking bone in his wrist echoed in his ears even as he felt himself falling backwards into the stairwell. Bright flashes of red filled his head as his body hit the treads on the way down, each impact hurting a new bit of anatomy until he came to a sprawling halt at his uncle's feet. He stared up in horror as Vernon loomed over him, heavy meaty hands reaching for him, the moustached mouth working wordlessly as his piggy eyes bugged out in rage. He tried to squirm away, to escape the maddened man, to no effect, feeling as if he'd been bound to the floor by invisible ropes or a Bindus charm. As the hands approached his face, Harry screamed, for they changed, going longer and more slender, the pink flesh transforming to deadly white and his uncle's fat face melted away into the taut flesh of a lipless mouth and slit nose, the pale blue watery eyes transforming into orbs of blood red. There was a wand in one of the hands and the mouth parted to speak. "Avedra--"
Harry's shriek of terror echoed around the bedroom, tearing him from the nightmare to lay gasping for breath, his heart pounding so hard as to shake his thin frame, and his clothing soaked with the perspiration of fear. He turned his face away from the sunlight that shone into the barred window and wondered if he could even manage to get to his knees much less his feet. He compromised by hitching himself up against the side of the desk, resting the back of his head against the wood, his broken wrist in his lap. As he got his breathing under control, he listened carefully for any sign that the scream had drawn the attention of his relatives. But, save for the sound of lazy birdsong outside the barred window, the house was silent. Aunt Petunia was probably out getting that new dress and Dudley was probably with her, or maybe with his friends. His uncle must be at work, gloating about the pools win.
Uncle Vernon and Voldemort. I don't know which one scares me more. He blinked his eyes, uselessly trying to clear the nearsighted blurriness. His glasses were still in pieces and he didn't think there would be anything useful in the debris of the room that would fix them. As he squinted he came up with a blurred image of a tray with a single cracked cup and a lump of something that looked like it had once been a breakfast roll, which was on the floor by the flap in the bottom of the closed door.
When he crawled painfully across the floor to the tray, he ignored the rock-hard roll, and carefully clasped the cup in his good hand. The water was lukewarm, indicating that it had been sitting there for quite some time in the muggy July heat, but it was moisture and even though he wanted to just gulp it down to quench the thirst that had built up in him, he sipped at it, letting it soak into the dry tissues of his mouth and throat. He had no idea when his aunt and uncle would provide more, so he had to make it last.
"I wish I were back at Hogwarts. Even Potions class with Snape is better than this," Harry muttered as he looked at the bit of blue sky visible through the window. "And at least then I'd know that Hedwig was safe. What did they do to you, Hedwig?" His head still throbbed and to take his mind off of it and his worry about his beloved owl, he began to recite the names of Charms he'd learned over the previous four years. "To levitate, Wingardium Leviosa. To immobilize, Petrificus Totalitus. To disarm, Expelliarimus." When he ran out of Charms, he moved on to the Latin names of magical plants, and then to Potions ingredients. "Wormwood. Asphodel. Boomslang Skin. Unicorn Horn." His voice faded away, first into mutters and then into silence as he fell asleep once more.
"Get up, you useless layabout!" It was Aunt Petunia's shrill voice that jarred him from his sleep. "You've got ten minutes to get cleaned up and you've wasted three of them already." She glared at him as he staggered to his feet, then she swept down the hall toward her bedroom where she slammed the door closed behind her.
Harry closed the bathroom door and sagged against it, as the world swayed about him. Turning on the tap, he thrust his face under the cold water flow and gulped greedily. The frigid water made his teeth hurt and his guts tighten but he continued to drink, filling up before he straightened and peered at himself in the mirror. The bruising on his face had continued to darken and it was no wonder that his vision was blurrier than usual. His left eye was half-closed by the swelling. He shook his head, wincing, then opened the medicine cabinet to pull out the toothpaste. He never did get his teeth brushed that night, because resting on the shelf above the crinkled tube, he saw a rolled up elastic bandage.
When Petunia had come pounding on the bathroom door two minutes later, Harry limped out of the bathroom holding his broken arm close to his body. She barely let him get back inside his room before she slammed and locked the door on him. As the young wizard sank down on the bed, he lifted his left arm slightly away from his side, letting the bandage roll drop to the mattress. Using a broken ruler for a splint, he wrapped up the swollen wrist as securely as he could, immobilizing it, and easing the pain.
"When I get back to Hogwarts, I'm going to go thank Madam Pomfrey a million times over for how well she's fixed me up over the last four years!" he promised himself as he tried to ignore the aromas of fried chicken, chips and a variety of sauces and vegetable that permeated the house. His stomach growled and he went back into his quiet litany of magical terms to take his mind away from 4 Privet Drive.
* * * * *
July 2, 1995, evening
(Hogwarts)
Severus clawed his way out of slumber, trying to escape the images that were bombarding him. The released memories were overwhelming and as he re-experienced the episodes from the two years that had been the happiest of his life, he alternately raged over and mourned their loss over the barren years between then and the present.
He lay staring up at the shadowed canopy of his bed, not seeing the draped velvet but Lily's tearstained face the day he'd walked out on her betrayal of their dreams. At the time he'd only been able to see only the betrayal, not the anguish in her eyes as she realized that she was trapped. Golden Boy Potter, apprenticed to the DADA instructor, just as he, himself, had been apprenticed to the old Potions Master, stepped in to save the day, to become a hero yet again, protecting the good name of the Muggle-born witch, and taking the love child of Severus Snape and Lily Evans as his own.
He'd seen them afterwards, once or twice when they came to visit Dumbledore in the course of James' secret work with the Headmaster and others who were trying to find new ways to effectively fight against the Dark Memories he'd never lost. The Halloween after her marriage, Lily had stopped in to visit Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing, while he was delivering a new batch of healing potions to the mediwitch. She had been cuddling a three-month-old Harry as she came through the door, caroling out Poppy's name. He could still recall the look of shock on her face as she'd rounded the curtain that shielded the office and the apothecary from the main ward to find him looming by the counter. He'd sneered at her with contempt, he remembered, glowering at the black-haired baby in her arms, then swept from the room, wanting nothing to do with anything or anyone that had to do with James Potter--not caring about the hurt that backed her emerald eyes.
But I didn't know he was my son. Severus rolled to sit on the edge of the bed, pushing the bed curtains open to stare out into the dimly lit room. By then, my memories were already hidden from me. By whom?
He found his eyes going to the blanket-covered Pensieve. Maybe Dumbledore was right. Until he got this sorted out, he'd be of no use to anyone. He stood up and carried the stone basin to the desk, seated himself in the upright chair and picked up his wand. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and touched the end of the thin shaft to his temple, drawing forth the silvery threads.
To be continued
Author's Note: Thanks for all the nice reviews!